6 ms·

Apparently there are something like 1K derailments a year in the US? Had no idea...Seems pretty high. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/17/

by pookha 4y ago

Apparently there are something like 1K derailments a year in the US? Had no idea...Seems pretty high. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/17/train-derailment-statistics-safety-damages/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/17/tra...

fh973 4y ago
Indeed... the EU has a similar network size and there it's less than 100: https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918 https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918 Edit: less than 100 (Entgleisungen).
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  How much less than 1000 (my German is pretty rusty)? e.g. 900 vs 1100 is not really statistically different, and doesn't suggest a systemic problem. Especially given the heavy focus on shipping for the US rail network versus passengers in the EU. Tracks in the US that are used for passengers are maintained better than shipping-only tracks, for sure.
  - fr0sty 4y ago
    Some light googling gives me 390B kilometer-tonnes[1] in Europe and 1.6T ton-miles[2] in the US for 2019. So that is 6x the freight movement. The US rail network also >2x longer than Europe[3] (360,000km vs 151,000km). [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Railway_freight_transport_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/198443/us-class-i-freight-railroads-revenue-ton-miles-of-freight-since-2009/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/198443/us-class-i-freigh... [3] https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-american-and-european-rail-systems/ https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-a...
    - piva00 4y ago
      I believe this dataset per quarter [0] is more accurate, it adds up to some ~1.8-2b ton-kilometres for the EU-27. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=549004 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
    - danhor 4y ago
      Cursory googling throws out various different numbers for the rail length with english wikipedia saying that they're both roughly equal size at 210 vs 220 Mm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...) with old UIC data, the German one citing the cia world factbook which specifies 230Mm for the European union and 300Mm for the US (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/railways/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/railways/). I highly doubt that the US rail network is twice the size of the EU one by most metrics, I guess different methods for counting length were mixed there (e.g. how is single-track vs double-track counted). This is taking europe as in the EU, as anything else is annoying. It'd also be pretty interesting to get the frequency of passenger rail derailments vs freight derailments to more accurately compare the numbers given the high amount of passenger rail in EU. As a very rough idea, the first document I found giving any indication about the distribution had 2 dangerous freight derailments and 3 dangerous passenger train derailments in germany for 2021 (https://www.eisenbahn-unfalluntersuchung.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EUB/Jahresberichte/Jahresbericht_2021.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 https://www.eisenbahn-unfalluntersuchung.de/SharedDocs/Downl... P. 16ff.). The EU also differs from the US in that that cargo trains are much shorter, leading to more trains needed for the same amount of freight cars. So the question is does the rate of derailments scale with the number of individual cars or with the number of trains? EDIT: Looking at the floridarail.com link, they say that the US has a broader gauge than europe. Since almost all of the US is standard gauge and almost all of europe is standard gauge or wider, this is just wrong. It's also news to me that europe (specifically germany) doesn't allow toxic chemicals to be transported over rail. The article seems a bit iffy.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        >So the question is does the rate of derailments scale with the number of individual cars or with the number of trains? You have to take in a much larger number of factors than that. The railroad industry is currently pushing their new just in time paradigm which has been leading to attempted strikes in the US (Uncle Joe says no) by the railroad workers. The railroad operators are pushing for longer trains, less engineers per train, and less inspection time per car while also playing computerized shipping optimizations that put the number of 'hazards' on a train just below the regulated minimum number of cars so they don't have to declare it. It's just ironic that this incident that got national news happened so quickly after the railroad co's got their no right to strike validated. It looks like it could very well be their undoing.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    The second row in that chart shows derailments. So 104 derailments in 2014 and 68 derailments in 2016. That extrapolates to be in roughly the same ballpark (only by a factor of ~2x off) with what this sibling comment pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886899
  - hellerve 4y ago
    2 per week, i.e. roughly 100.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - piva00 4y ago
    Entgleisungen would be derailments. The EU-27 transported 2,927 billion ton-kilometres of rail freight, the US ~2,200 billion ton-kilometres.
    - fr0sty 4y ago
      Where did you find those EU-27 numbers? I am seeing something around ~400B ton-km. > "Rail freight activity in Europe, measured in tonne-kilometers, grew from 339 Billion tonne-km in 2003 to 398Billion tonne-km in 2019" Page 14 https://erfarail.eu/uploads/The%20European%20Rail%20Freight%20Market%20-%20Competitive%20Analysis%20and%20Recommendations-1649762289.pdf https://erfarail.eu/uploads/The%20European%20Rail%20Freight%...
      - piva00 4y ago
        From the quarterly numbers here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=549004 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
        fr0sty 4y ago
        That appears to be "road freight" not "rail freight".
pionar 4y ago
We're actually at historic lows for # of derailments in the US over the past 30 years
rootusrootus 4y ago
How does this compare to Europe, or the rest of the world? I can spot numbers like 'every other day' in Europe, but getting comparables is proving difficult. Given the different nature of the tracks, usage, and geography, it may be difficult to draw a meaningful comparison anyway. I do see that the rates are broadly similar between Canada and the US, which is not a surprise but does suggest a correlation.
- orwin 4y ago
  I could probably get the exact numbers, but nowadays probably less than 100/year. Diminishing every years from 2004 through 2014 at least. Plus we have gauges issues that the US don't, so this much disparity is concerning.
fineIllregister 4y ago
Most derailments are completely uneventful. The train just barely goes off the tracks and slows to a stop, remaining completely upright. I've heard from people that they were on a passenger train that derailed and didn't even know it until the conductor told them.
fr0sty 4y ago
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailments-this-month/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailm... Most derailments are in train yards. Few cause injuries, fewer cause deaths, and only a handful involve hazardous substances. I don't say that to downplay the mess in OH/PA, but just to make sure the base-rate is understood. And if you want to compare to europe it looks like US freight rail volume is at least 6x as large. Also no idea if/how they count "fender bender" derailments in switching yards. US standard is >$12k in damage according to TFA.
- mlindner 4y ago
  A couple months ago I watched an amateur train nerd on youtube cover a derailment that dumped a load of bitumin/tar into a river and destroyed a bridge. This kind of thing happens pretty commonly. No national news covered it, only a couple of local news stations, at least from what I could find on youtube/googling. It's confusing to me why this specific incident got so much attention.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Probably because it was literally visible from space (one it was lit on fire).
  - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
    Maybe it should be confusing to you why more such harmful derailings are not getting as much attention
  - katbyte 4y ago
    Link? That sounds like a channel I’d be interested in And this got the attention it did because it’s far more severe then one load of tar/bitumen in a river - and far more toxic made potentially worse from the choice to. Burn it off to clear the tracks faster
    - mlindner 4y ago
      Youtube has a lot of them. Here's one about a derailment in Nashville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dZT7TTQqb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dZT7TTQqb4 Here's the one I mentioned about a derailment in middle of nowhere Iowa that dumped tar into the creek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpL0Xk9jTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpL0Xk9jTI Here's one of those local news reports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pKVdv-Y6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pKVdv-Y6Y
fullstop 4y ago
From what I understand a lot of those are in the rail yards and not at full speed. Here is a poorly made website which can generate reports on this: https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/query/inctally3.aspx https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/que...
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Goddamn I love government websites. A simple form, with clear and common styling, with no place I have to put my email, with no popup about joining a damn mailing list, with no ads, and when I click the submit button, the response is instant and a clear table that doesn't do anything stupid with javascript. Every time the government spends my tax dollars developing a web page with a form that generates reports, an angel gets it's wings.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    Yes, I like that part greatly. The text was very small, though, and zooming does not behave as I expect.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      And yet, this boring and older system is probably more accessible to disabled people.
  - ambicapter 4y ago
    Ok now try to figure out where to change your residential address on the FAA's website and tell me how much you love it.
  - ketzo 4y ago
    I am also obsessed with the header image that does not even try to scale with width. It just stretches. Awesome
yamtaddle 4y ago
"Wheel off track" is a derailment. Doesn't have to mean a huge wreck and pile-up. Can happen at low speeds. The vast majority aren't that big a deal. (my dad ended his career in middle-management with a railroad—not Norfolk, but for all I know Norfolk owns the one he worked for now, there was a lot of consolidation—and for a few years he had to travel to derailments in his region, when they happened, and derailments happened somewhat often)
tristor 4y ago
>Seems pretty high. This is a similar discrepancy between the technical meaning of language as used in statistics, and the popular usage of language as the layperson understands it when they read it in the news as happens with the term "mass shooting". When a layperson hears "train derailment" they think of what happened in Ohio. When a layperson hears "mass shooting" they think of what happened at Uvalde. In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a train derailment is ANY time a train has a wheel that goes off of the track which is not part of a planned maintenance. These are rarely catastrophic. In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a mass shooting is ANY time a shooting has more than 3 victims, regardless of location. 99% of these are gang shootings in the inner city, in the 1.3% of US counties that make up 90% of all violent crimes. Arguably, these are always catastrophic, but the cause/solution/surrounding issues are vastly different than the popular topic. As usual, technical language used in the media is misconstrued and misunderstood by non-technical reporters and lay audiences.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by pookha 4y ago

fh973 4y ago

Indeed... the EU has a similar network size and there it's less than 100: https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918 https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918 Edit: less than 100 (Entgleisungen).

rootusrootus 4y ago
How much less than 1000 (my German is pretty rusty)? e.g. 900 vs 1100 is not really statistically different, and doesn't suggest a systemic problem. Especially given the heavy focus on shipping for the US rail network versus passengers in the EU. Tracks in the US that are used for passengers are maintained better than shipping-only tracks, for sure.
- fr0sty 4y ago
  Some light googling gives me 390B kilometer-tonnes[1] in Europe and 1.6T ton-miles[2] in the US for 2019. So that is 6x the freight movement. The US rail network also >2x longer than Europe[3] (360,000km vs 151,000km). [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Railway_freight_transport_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/198443/us-class-i-freight-railroads-revenue-ton-miles-of-freight-since-2009/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/198443/us-class-i-freigh... [3] https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-american-and-european-rail-systems/ https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-a...
  - piva00 4y ago
    I believe this dataset per quarter [0] is more accurate, it adds up to some ~1.8-2b ton-kilometres for the EU-27. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=549004 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - danhor 4y ago
    Cursory googling throws out various different numbers for the rail length with english wikipedia saying that they're both roughly equal size at 210 vs 220 Mm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...) with old UIC data, the German one citing the cia world factbook which specifies 230Mm for the European union and 300Mm for the US (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/railways/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/railways/). I highly doubt that the US rail network is twice the size of the EU one by most metrics, I guess different methods for counting length were mixed there (e.g. how is single-track vs double-track counted). This is taking europe as in the EU, as anything else is annoying. It'd also be pretty interesting to get the frequency of passenger rail derailments vs freight derailments to more accurately compare the numbers given the high amount of passenger rail in EU. As a very rough idea, the first document I found giving any indication about the distribution had 2 dangerous freight derailments and 3 dangerous passenger train derailments in germany for 2021 (https://www.eisenbahn-unfalluntersuchung.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EUB/Jahresberichte/Jahresbericht_2021.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 https://www.eisenbahn-unfalluntersuchung.de/SharedDocs/Downl... P. 16ff.). The EU also differs from the US in that that cargo trains are much shorter, leading to more trains needed for the same amount of freight cars. So the question is does the rate of derailments scale with the number of individual cars or with the number of trains? EDIT: Looking at the floridarail.com link, they say that the US has a broader gauge than europe. Since almost all of the US is standard gauge and almost all of europe is standard gauge or wider, this is just wrong. It's also news to me that europe (specifically germany) doesn't allow toxic chemicals to be transported over rail. The article seems a bit iffy.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      >So the question is does the rate of derailments scale with the number of individual cars or with the number of trains? You have to take in a much larger number of factors than that. The railroad industry is currently pushing their new just in time paradigm which has been leading to attempted strikes in the US (Uncle Joe says no) by the railroad workers. The railroad operators are pushing for longer trains, less engineers per train, and less inspection time per car while also playing computerized shipping optimizations that put the number of 'hazards' on a train just below the regulated minimum number of cars so they don't have to declare it. It's just ironic that this incident that got national news happened so quickly after the railroad co's got their no right to strike validated. It looks like it could very well be their undoing.
- chmod775 4y ago
  The second row in that chart shows derailments. So 104 derailments in 2014 and 68 derailments in 2016. That extrapolates to be in roughly the same ballpark (only by a factor of ~2x off) with what this sibling comment pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886899
- hellerve 4y ago
  2 per week, i.e. roughly 100.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- piva00 4y ago
  Entgleisungen would be derailments. The EU-27 transported 2,927 billion ton-kilometres of rail freight, the US ~2,200 billion ton-kilometres.
  - fr0sty 4y ago
    Where did you find those EU-27 numbers? I am seeing something around ~400B ton-km. > "Rail freight activity in Europe, measured in tonne-kilometers, grew from 339 Billion tonne-km in 2003 to 398Billion tonne-km in 2019" Page 14 https://erfarail.eu/uploads/The%20European%20Rail%20Freight%20Market%20-%20Competitive%20Analysis%20and%20Recommendations-1649762289.pdf https://erfarail.eu/uploads/The%20European%20Rail%20Freight%...
    - piva00 4y ago
      From the quarterly numbers here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=549004 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
      - fr0sty 4y ago
        That appears to be "road freight" not "rail freight".

pionar 4y ago

We're actually at historic lows for # of derailments in the US over the past 30 years

rootusrootus 4y ago

How does this compare to Europe, or the rest of the world? I can spot numbers like 'every other day' in Europe, but getting comparables is proving difficult. Given the different nature of the tracks, usage, and geography, it may be difficult to draw a meaningful comparison anyway. I do see that the rates are broadly similar between Canada and the US, which is not a surprise but does suggest a correlation.

orwin 4y ago
I could probably get the exact numbers, but nowadays probably less than 100/year. Diminishing every years from 2004 through 2014 at least. Plus we have gauges issues that the US don't, so this much disparity is concerning.

fineIllregister 4y ago

Most derailments are completely uneventful. The train just barely goes off the tracks and slows to a stop, remaining completely upright. I've heard from people that they were on a passenger train that derailed and didn't even know it until the conductor told them.

fr0sty 4y ago

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailments-this-month/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailm... Most derailments are in train yards. Few cause injuries, fewer cause deaths, and only a handful involve hazardous substances. I don't say that to downplay the mess in OH/PA, but just to make sure the base-rate is understood. And if you want to compare to europe it looks like US freight rail volume is at least 6x as large. Also no idea if/how they count "fender bender" derailments in switching yards. US standard is >$12k in damage according to TFA.

mlindner 4y ago
A couple months ago I watched an amateur train nerd on youtube cover a derailment that dumped a load of bitumin/tar into a river and destroyed a bridge. This kind of thing happens pretty commonly. No national news covered it, only a couple of local news stations, at least from what I could find on youtube/googling. It's confusing to me why this specific incident got so much attention.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Probably because it was literally visible from space (one it was lit on fire).
- Ar-Curunir 4y ago
  Maybe it should be confusing to you why more such harmful derailings are not getting as much attention
- katbyte 4y ago
  Link? That sounds like a channel I’d be interested in And this got the attention it did because it’s far more severe then one load of tar/bitumen in a river - and far more toxic made potentially worse from the choice to. Burn it off to clear the tracks faster
  - mlindner 4y ago
    Youtube has a lot of them. Here's one about a derailment in Nashville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dZT7TTQqb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dZT7TTQqb4 Here's the one I mentioned about a derailment in middle of nowhere Iowa that dumped tar into the creek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpL0Xk9jTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpL0Xk9jTI Here's one of those local news reports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pKVdv-Y6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pKVdv-Y6Y

fullstop 4y ago

From what I understand a lot of those are in the rail yards and not at full speed. Here is a poorly made website which can generate reports on this: https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/query/inctally3.aspx https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/que...

mrguyorama 4y ago
Goddamn I love government websites. A simple form, with clear and common styling, with no place I have to put my email, with no popup about joining a damn mailing list, with no ads, and when I click the submit button, the response is instant and a clear table that doesn't do anything stupid with javascript. Every time the government spends my tax dollars developing a web page with a form that generates reports, an angel gets it's wings.
- fullstop 4y ago
  Yes, I like that part greatly. The text was very small, though, and zooming does not behave as I expect.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    And yet, this boring and older system is probably more accessible to disabled people.
- ambicapter 4y ago
  Ok now try to figure out where to change your residential address on the FAA's website and tell me how much you love it.
- ketzo 4y ago
  I am also obsessed with the header image that does not even try to scale with width. It just stretches. Awesome

yamtaddle 4y ago

"Wheel off track" is a derailment. Doesn't have to mean a huge wreck and pile-up. Can happen at low speeds. The vast majority aren't that big a deal. (my dad ended his career in middle-management with a railroad—not Norfolk, but for all I know Norfolk owns the one he worked for now, there was a lot of consolidation—and for a few years he had to travel to derailments in his region, when they happened, and derailments happened somewhat often)

tristor 4y ago

>Seems pretty high. This is a similar discrepancy between the technical meaning of language as used in statistics, and the popular usage of language as the layperson understands it when they read it in the news as happens with the term "mass shooting". When a layperson hears "train derailment" they think of what happened in Ohio. When a layperson hears "mass shooting" they think of what happened at Uvalde. In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a train derailment is ANY time a train has a wheel that goes off of the track which is not part of a planned maintenance. These are rarely catastrophic. In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a mass shooting is ANY time a shooting has more than 3 victims, regardless of location. 99% of these are gang shootings in the inner city, in the 1.3% of US counties that make up 90% of all violent crimes. Arguably, these are always catastrophic, but the cause/solution/surrounding issues are vastly different than the popular topic. As usual, technical language used in the media is misconstrued and misunderstood by non-technical reporters and lay audiences.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]